After a pleasant but low-key opening day, Cannes kicked into top gear on its first evening, with a line-up of stars other festivals could only dream of – not to mention sunshine, cloudless skies and a Mediterranean that helped the Cote d’Azur live up to its name.

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In retrospect, its opening ceremony was an obvious magnet for paparazzi and rubber-neckers. This year’s jury has its share of major stars – jury chairman Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. And the choice of a film to open the festival, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, proved a masterstroke. Allen likes to people his films with good-looking actors, and Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Adrien Brody showed up for the premiere, helping those who live by shooting red-carpet arrivals feel it was a major payday.

Uma Thurman poses during a photocall. She is on the judging panel at the festival. (Photo: REUTERS)

17.58Lynne Ramsey, the director of WNTTAK, has described the film as "Ben Hur on a Blue Peter budget", and acknowledged that it is going to spark controversy:

I think a film like this you're always going to have a bit of a controversial reaction but you know I feel good about the piece of work I've done. There was an nice sense of satisfaction at the end of making the film and Cannes was a bonus.

It is material that occupies relatively taboo status, the concept of a mother, she is detached, who isn't in love with her son, it's a tough one.

17.34We Need to Talk About Kevin stars Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly and director Lynne Ramsey have been giving a press conference about WNTTAK, in which they defend it against accusations of violence. Ah, but is it more violent than KFP2? That's a Tarantinoesque bloodbath, apparently:

Out of the hands of director Gore Verbinski, whose indulgent brand of stoner-surrealism has found a satisfying new home in Rango, it has instead fallen into the clutches of Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine). The movie he gives us is at once more eager to please and all the more blatantly third-rate. It clomps along, doing all the baseline things you expect from it, and nothing besides.

Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: "too much clutter, a script with scurvy, and a blockbuster you could accuse of languishing".

16.53 Will somebody. Please. Make them stop. Talking. About this God. Damn. Panda. Reuters reports than when "asked whether he thought pandas had 'existential moments'", Jack Black did not throw a water jug at the blathering hack, but instead replied:

Maybe they do for brief moments: gnawing on a bamboo shoot, they think, what is life all about? What is the point in this meaningless universe that goes on forever? Maybe all life forms have fleeting moments of existentiality. You can print that.

16.37 It's been over an hour since I mentioned anything about Kung Fu Panda 2 and frankly I'm getting the DTs, so back we go. Has Jack Black risked offending America's gun lobby? Asked about the violence in the film - everyone's obsessed by it, it's weird - Black replied:

It (KFP2) discourages weaponry. I don't like guns. I don't own one. I like laser blasters. That's where I draw the line.

Black has also lined up with Michael Winterbottom, the British director, for an adaptation of the Jess Walter novel The Financial Lives of the Poets. The film has a working title of Bailout, and he plays the unemployed and deeply-in-debt lead character. Winterbottom says: "Jess Walter is an extremely talented writer. Bailout is a very funny account of one man caught up in his own financial crisis - a rare feat of being funny and true at the same time."

16.23 Sukhdev Sandhu, our film reviewer, has watched today's two Palme d'Or offerings, and here are his verdicts.

Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty is the first fully Australian film in competition since Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge in 2001. It’s a startlingly poised, modern-day fairy tale, a strange marriage of Jane Campion and Lars Von Trier that titillates, terrifies and haunts in equal measure. Emily Browning plays Lucy, a university student who takes up a job as a ‘Sleeping Beauty’. The work is very simple: she is driven to a rural mansion, sedated, stripped, and then given over to rich clients who can do (almost) anything they wish with her.

One of the main reasons why 2010 was such a mediocre year at Cannes was the complete absence in competition of any women filmmakers. This time round there are four — the most ever – and the most eagerly awaited of them is Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. The Scottish director of Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar has had a run of bad luck in recent years — The Lovely Bones was taken off her hands and given over to Peter Jackson — but she has lost none of her ability to create exquisite-looking and psychologically intense mood cinema from dark material.

Just for the record, and much as I hate to disagree with Sukhdev, losing the chance to direct The Lovely Bones is not "bad luck". It is a stroke of the greatest fortune. The Lovely Bones has been scientifically proven to be the worst book ever written, worse even than The Da Vinci Code, and since films are always worse than books the film must be the single worst thing in the history of the universe - worse even than murder, or field hockey, or loneliness. True.

16.02 In non-KFP2, non-Angelina Jolie-related news, David Gritten, our film critic, wonders how Mel Gibson's bizarrely titled film The Beaver (in which he plays "a depressed executive who withdraws from the world and starts communicating only via a glove puppet", bien sûr) will fare at Cannes:

The film breezes into town on Tuesday (May 17), but suddenly it looks as if The Beaver needs Cannes rather than vice versa. Its opening weekend’s box office figures in the United States were dismal — just $104,000 (£63,700) from a limited 22-screen opening.

What kept audiences away? Was it the glove puppet? Have Gibson’s now famous rants — variously drunken, anti-Semitic and misogynistic — made him box-office poison? And if the latter, will the rest of the world give him an easier time than the US? We shall see.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are being sued for £75,000 by a secretary at their French chateau who claims she was sacked for 'absenteeism' while on sick leave.

The woman worked as a bilingual secretary at the Hollywood couple's sprawling £25 million estate in the heart of the southern Provence countryside.

She was fired by another manager at the chateau on the grounds that her absence was detrimental to the smooth running of the property, Mr Ludot said.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on the Cannes red carpet. (Photo: REX)

14.38 Ah, the strangely context-free "connecting to violence" comment might have been to do with hacks at the Kung Fu Panda 2 (I've typed that too many times now as well, so from now on it's KFP2) press conference asking whether KFP2 is too violent. To which Angelina Jolie obviously said "Yes, it is, it's disgustingly violent and should be banned immediately".

Oh no - wait, sorry, I've got that wrong. She said:

I don't see this as a film that's too violent. Because even in the final battle, it's the inner peace and the way of kind of sending back negative energy that is actually what wins against aggression and violence and war weapons.

You heard it here first: the well-remunerated stars of a major kids' movie don't think it's too violent for children. Lucky really. Maximum nonsense-points for "sending back negative energy", by the way.

If you ever need to tell Angelina and Jack apart, just remember that Angelina always stands on the left. (Photo: GETTY)

14.30 Kung Fu Panda 2 really is dominating the headlines, and I have to say that is not a line I ever thought I'd write. Dustin Hoffman, one of the film's aforementioned unnecessarily-big-names-for-a-kiddies'-cartoon, has given us a heartwarming glimpse into his softer side. Or something. Anyway, he cried during Bambi:

Being probably the oldest person in the room - if anyone is older can they please stand up? - I remember the first time I saw Bambi and it's interesting because you can connect Bambi to violence.

It's extraordinary. Bambi has the big fire in the woods and I still remember bursting out crying because all the animals were nearly killed by fire.

Not sure what all that stuff about "connecting it to violence" is about, but anyway.

14.10 See painfully beautiful people pretend to be pirates in this Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides trailer:

Go on. Just stare at it in sadness, marvelling at how much better-looking they all are than you.

13.48 Anita Singh, celeb-stalker, emails irritably:

Robert de Niro is here, Woody Allen is here, Bernardo Bertolucci is here. And the star who brings Cannes to a standstill... is Lady Gaga, who made a 10 minute appearance on the beach last night to show off another stupid hair-do then left in a blacked-out limo with an army of bodyguards, pursued by the world's paparazzi. It's a FILM festival. Go away.

13.03 Oh incidentally the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film is premiering, if that's a word, on Saturday at Cannes. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides stars Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz, which must be among the most pulchritude-heavy top billings of any films ever.

Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp, the unreasonably beautiful stars of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. (Photo: AP)

12.46 More Kung Fu Panda 2 news, I'm afraid: PA reports that Angelina Jolie, celebrity child-snatcher, has described the animated movie about a panda that learns martial arts (!) as having some "pretty heavy lessons" for its youthful audience:

I brought the children to see the movie and they loved it and laughed the whole time and I wondered whether they would ask me questions about it... birth mothers and orphanage and all that, these are happy words - they are very, very used to these discussions.

It takes so much talent for writers to be able to make children giggle and laugh and get excited about all the action and scream and then somehow underneath it they learn these pretty heavy lesson.

Is there anything that a ninja bear can't teach us? How to laugh, when to cry, whether to axe-kick people who stand between us and our bamboo dinner, why we should refuse to have sex in captivity, how to slowly go extinct: these are the lessons of Kung Fu Panda 2.

12.28 BBC Films tweet:

@bbcfilmsis delighted with the first critical response to our film We Need to Talk About Kevin. Congrats to Lynne & the cast.

12.11 With all the buzz going around Cannes - or so I gather from my bunker next to Victoria Station - being about Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, now seems a good time to plug Tim Robey's piece from last month, Terrence Malick - Hollywood's poet returns:

Somehow, among the world’s leading film-makers, only Malick could have inspired such mayhem. There’s no other director alive whose work is the object of such awestruck and jittery anticipation, fuelled by the long wait his devotees must endure as he pieces each new offering together.

Of course, another reason why it's a good time is because there's not actually very much going on at this point. Still though.

11.22Sleeping Beauty is the other competition film screening today; the first showing started at 11:30am French time, so 10:30am here. It's a very odd-sounding Australian film about unconscious prostitution - read Peter Bradshaw's review over at The Guardian if you want to find out what I'm talking about, I can't face describing it myself, this is a family blog - and the critical response is muddled so far. Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival, is impressed:

But gossip-peddlar Michael Leahy describes the film's reception as "very mixed". We'll let you know what our own reviewers say when they file, and then you'll know what to think.

Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty

11.15 Desperate to know what Woody Allen ate last night? The menu at the soirée d'ouverture was, according to AP, "a lobster starter, followed by veal and bell pepper-stuffed squash blossoms by Ducasse, one of France's most celebrated chefs." So there you have it.

11.04 Angelina - yes, I'm on first name terms; what of it? - anyway, Angelina says that she's in Cannes with her husband Brad Pitt and their six (6) children. Brad - my pal Brad, who was in Fight Club - is appearing in Terrence Malick's Palme d'Or-shortlisted Tree of Life, which screens on Monday.

As you'll obviously be able to read, the three ludicrously A-list stars of the animated Kung Fu Panda sequel were asked what their favourite animated movies were. Dumbo and Bambi for Jolie and Hoffman, yawn blah whatever, but Jack Black picked The Triplets of Belleville - or Belleville Rendez-Vous as it was released in the UK, the wonderful, weird, near-silent French animation about a grandmother and an overweight dog crossing the Atlantic on a pedalo to rescue her kidnapped Tour de France cyclist grandson. It's beautiful and odd and a very unexpected choice from Mr Black: much kudos. See the trailer:

10.34 Enough of all this serious cinema. Here's a picture, via Orange Cinéma on Twitter, of the press conference ahead of the screening of Kung Fu Panda 2. Because obviously just one Kung Fu Panda was not enough for the world.

10.14 For those of you who like glitzy celebrity parties and such, here's a video from last night's soirée d'ouverture which I think means like opening bash or something. Anyway, it's got all Woody Allen and Jude Law and their ilk, wearing expensive tuxes and very much not throwing any shapes or getting embarrassingly drunk and falling over. It's no kind of party I recognise.

The camera also keeps coming back to a guy who looks like James May's less stylish dad, who I suppose I'm expected to recognise. Let me know if you work out who it is.

10.04 We Need to Talk About Kevin - or, to save my typing fingers, WNTTAK as I am now going to refer to it - is, incidentally, the only "British film" in the running for the Palme d'Or. That's "British film" as in "film set in America, shot in America, based on a book by an American author and starring one British actress", but hey, let's take what we can get, eh? It is funded by the BBC and directed by a Scot, so I guess it counts. And Lionel Shriver moved to London a few years ago.

Glasgow-born Ramsay, incidentally, says she has "not had a chance to be nervous" about the Cannes appearance, and says of the film: "I like taking meaty material, risky stuff. And I just thought it was a bloody good story."

09.51 Today's big Screening Event is We Need to Talk About Kevin, the Lynne Ramsay-directed adaptation of Lionel Shriver's deeply unsettling 2003 novel, about a high-school massacre and the mother of the boy-murderer. David Gritten, our film critic, has just emailed with a snippet about it:

Just come out of We Need To Talk About Kevin, from Scottish director Lynne Ramsay. Tilda Swinton stars as mother of a psychopathic teenager who kills high-school classmates. Disturbingly brilliant film. Swinton is outstanding, and Lynne Ramsay seems incapable of composing an uninteresting frame. A very fine British effort indeed, respectfully applauded by the Cannes audience.

Tilda Swinton as Eva and Jasper Newell as Kevin in We Need to Talk About Kevin.

09.50 Morning morning. Day two of the 64th Festival de Cannes,the vast Riviera luvvie-fest and cinematic horse-trading event,is upon us. Yesterday, the festival opened with a screening of Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, a time-travelling romantic comedy, saccharine love-letter to the French capital and "Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes for cultural snobs", according to our own Sukhdev Sandhu. It's been met with a largely indifferent response. It turns out that "his best film since Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is, in fact, damning with faint praise.

Woody Allen, photographed as always with various attractive women one-third his age - in this case Rachel McAdams and Lea Seydoux. (Photo: GETTY)

In other news, Lady Gaga - she of the increasingly ludicrous fashion statements - turned up for a waterfront gig which was less surprising than perhaps was intended, since there were several dozen photos on Twitter showing her warming up earlier. She also had a somewhat ridiculous haircut, but that's not really news any more. The Times's festival diary reports that she's supposed to be doing "a 'secret' five-song gig at Annabel's, the private members' club, in London this evening", which simply suggests that she has not got the hang of these secret gigs at all. Secret. The clue's in the name.

Lady Gaga, being discreet. (Photo: REX FEATURES)

And Carla Bruni, the wife of political Oompa-Loompa and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, made headlines simply by not showing up. Mrs Bruni, who makes a cameo appearance in Midnight in Paris, was expected to appear but did not for "personal reasons", pouring fuel on to the fire of rumours that she is pregnant. She also said that Allen would rather have cast her in her movie than the Queen. We've naturally taken that to mean that she thinks she's more famous than the Queen, or something.